In the September issue of “Speaker Magazine” (published by the National Speakers Association), I have a 3-page article. It is called: Do Less, Make More: Work Only One Hour a Day by Mastering Leverage.
Here’s the beginning…
I’ve been trying an experiment. For the last six months, I’ve been working, on average, only one hour each day on my speaking business.
This wasn’t easy at first given my tendency to sometimes work more than 100 hours a week. However, what I eventually learned was that I could be insanely productive by simply shifting my mindset. Long hours aren’t necessarily required to lead a successful career.
The fact is, although there are an unlimited number of things that speakers can do to grow or improve their businesses, there is a point of diminishing returns. The upside on additional effort decreases significantly beyond this point.
THE L-WORD: LEVERAGE
To successfully work only one hour a day (or at least a greatly reduced amount of time), you need to master the concept of leverage.
Leverage is something that gives the greatest return with the least amount of energy. We typically view our work as linear. An hour of work gives us an hour of results. But what if an hour of work could yield 100 hours (or more) of results? Instead of diminishing returns, you get exponential returns.
This is leverage.
Each morning I ask myself, what is the one thing I need to do today? What is the one thing that will create the most value? What is the one thing that only I can do? That is the activity that I engage in for the day, delegating, deferring or eliminating everything else. The key is to focus on activities that create leverage and maximize results.
The remainder of the article discusses why you should “stop telling people what to do,” how to “multiple your results by first dividing, how to leverage your speech, and how to create new revenue streams.
